Thought things from the head of a British teenager who has uncertain but very definitely lefty and libertarian (not in the economic sense) views.

1 Nov 2012

Why don't I write (more)?

As you may or, more likely, may not have noticed I haven't posted here for about 4 months. Not going to lie, I was actually pretty surprised that it's been that long. I literally only did the maths about 10 seconds ago as of writing this sentence (it'll be considerably longer by the time you read this, obviously. It'll be considerably longer as of the time this is published for starters).

This hasn't entirely been due to lack of ideas for blog posts. I have about 4 drafts in the working that were started after this date, and there are more than a few drafts before that (I have '108 posts' (well, probably 109 now) according to the old dashboard). Of course, I'm pretty sure there are a few duplicates and out dated posts in there (like a sequel to my royal wedding piece for the Jubilee - I figured it got beyond the point of parody when I noticed that a few official Things actually used a capitalised Her and they were organising a prayer of thanks (I'm not really sure where you go from that)), and many of these 'drafts' exist purely in the form of titles and/or paragraphs. I've not looked, but I'm fairly certain some of those aren't even opening paragraphs, and to be honest I'm guessing I forgot about them for a reason.

There have also been ideas for blog posts that I've not even considered starting. The biggest of these that I can think of is a defence of the police = drunken family member analogy that featured in this piece about the Andrew Mitchell thing. That one actually turned out to be just as well - it turns out I'd actually misread it and I'm confused at the lack of nuance in the article (like, really, we can dislike cops and Tories at the same time, we can side against both of them if we really want to). Furthermore the article seems to be stating that the police are not like drunken family members at all. Even though they totally are (I mean, people apologise for them regardless of how bad they are, they can be pretty damn abusive (and violent, but I've never experienced this part personally), can be openly bigoted (and loud about it), are slightly terrifying to be around and, frankly, are total dicks).

Leaving aside inspiration (and my actual non-lack thereof), I can't even cite lack of time as an excuse, well, I suppose now I've started A-levels . I probably can get away with it, but I had 2 months with pretty much nothing to do before that (ah the joys of study leave followed by school holidays), so yeah. Also, none of them are coursework based; I'm not suffering too much.
Even if I'm supposed to do, like, 5 hours out of school work a week per subject*. Admittedly I think the having nothing to do basically caused low-level brain rot (I would suck in some conceptions of the socialist utopia), but whatever.

I think ultimately, my reasons come from a degree of all-or-nothing perfectionism, coupled with an anxiety over how things might be received - if nothing else I'm really self conscious about my lack of understanding of political theory (for starters I still don't know what the hell 'dialectics' means, beyond the definition of 'debate except with both sides trying to get to the truth', and I haven't even read the Communist Manifesto), and from what I can gather people are really big on that now?

I'm also vaguely aware that I may end up expressing a Wrong Opinion (like how I don't think abortion at 36 weeks is okay (and I can't come
up with a method which won't have impacts on the body similar to
actually giving birth, so I don't think choice in that sense comes into
it, even if it should arguably come above the rights of the baby) I
think you can chose to have the baby before that point anyway)) and getting hounded out by people who I like. there's also the issue of me maybe possibly writing complete and utter horse shite - for starters, from what I can gather TV Tropes has declared my use of parentheses to be official Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma (even though they're brackets (go figure)), not that that's actually a major issue - which is also a definite factor, even though a few of my posts are honestly not that bad (I say a 'few' because I like to pretend a few don't exist, even if I won't go full Activists Publication and straight up delete them)

So those are the reasons for 4 months of the delay. There's been 4 days since that mark came and passed though, and that's actually for a whole other reason. I actually have been meaning to get back into the 'groove' as such as writing these things, and I figure doing it on the first day of an event dedicated to something pretty similar - i.e. National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo, even though it really is more IntNoWriMo), which basically has the aim of getting potential novellists to actually write, even if it's shite**, - is fitting.

I was thinking of adding a bit on the reasons why I decided to start, probably with a liberal number of links to pieces by other writers on the topic (okay, fine, a link to That Bloody George Orwell Piece), but this is running a bit long for my liking, so keep your eyes peeled for it (I will get it done, promise). Or don't. It's up to you really. What kind of libertarian would I be if I forced you into it, anyway?
EDIT: Here's part 2.

*Maybe be expecting a blog on this later. It might just be speaking as an outsider, but whoever calls Art and Design soft subjects (as in easy) must be on some other planet or something. I can't 100% rule out the possibility that my school's design department forces pupils to do extra, but why the hell would they do that? As for the 5 hours thing, I can't exactly figure out how to stretch doing maths exercises from the textbook to 5 hours, so I don't think that'll work (definitely not until we do calculus).

**I won when I was 13 and I still cringe at the memory of what I wrote (yes, past!me, having a Miley Cyrus song as your villain makes perfect sense </sarcasm>). That's all I ever intend to tell you, so don't bother asking for more (that preview makes it sound better than it was, although it probably speaks volumes about my self esteem that I actually hated my self-insert protagonist for being a whiny git). Also, note my wonderful (</sarcasm>) structure now? I actually think my sentence structuring and thought organisation skills were worse in that.